20
The first thing I feel when I wake up is Blake’s hand still in mine.
Then, opening my eyes, I see her face, inches from mine, eyes still closed. She looks completely peaceful, so beautiful and serene in the morning light, a strand of her sun-streaked hair tangled in her dark eyelashes.
I reach out with my free hand, wanting to brush it away, but there’s a loud bang as the screen door flies open. My fingertips recoil quickly into my palm, as Aunt Lisa’s voice calls out to us.
“Breakfast is in five, ladies! Get it while it’s hot!”
Blake’s eyes slowly open, meeting mine. I hold her gaze for a long moment, then finally look away when my cheeks begin to burn. I don’t want her to think I’m creepily watching her sleep.
I pull my fingers out of her grip and sit up, sliding carefully to the edge of the truck bed, my eyes searching the light blue horizon, the magic from last night still lingering in the air, but fainter now in the light of day.
She groans, following just behind me. “Listen, I’m not saying that wasn’t fun,” she says as she slides past me, hopping down onto the grass, rubbing at her left shoulder. “But sleeping in the back of a truck was not one of our best ideas.”
I laugh and jump down after her, my back letting out a sympathy twang of pain. The hard metal of the truck bed was pretty unforgiving. We collect the pillows and the blankets, shuffling toward the screen door.
“Admit it,” Blake says over the top of her armful of pillows. “How many times did you think about bailing to sleep inside?”
I snort and hold the door open for her. “Only seven times. Maybe eight. You?”
I don’t add that I don’t know if it was because of the hard truck bed, or the fact that it was hard to get any sleep at all with her so close to me.
“Not even once,” she says, stopping me in my tracks. I don’t want to think her words mean more than they do, but I still feel a tiny swell of hope in the pit of my stomach.
I mask it by narrowing my eyes suspiciously at her as we drop the pillows off in the spare room. “Bullshit,” I say, and she breaks.
“Practically every hour on the hour,” she admits as she slides past me into the hallway, close enough to send goose bumps up and down the length of my arm.
“We must be getting close,” I say to Blake as the smell of manure comes wafting into the truck. As if on cue, the both of us start frantically rolling up our windows to block out the scent.
She nods, glancing at the GPS on her phone. “Under half an hour.”
I press my forehead against the glass and watch the familiar farmlands roll by, my long sigh condensing on the glass of the window.
I almost understand how Kiera must be feeling. I mean, after yesterday, I don’t exactly want to go back to Huckabee either.
It was hard to leave Aunt Lisa’s this morning, the beach and the sun and the possibilities. My return to Huckabee feels like crash-landing into reality in a lot of ways, but even still, the closer and closer we get, I feel… hopeful.
I tuck my leg underneath me as I scroll through my pictures from our trip. I keep scrolling back, through the photos I’ve taken this summer, through every item I’ve ticked off the list, through junior and sophomore year, farther and farther and farther until I find myself face-to-face again with Mom and her tattoo.
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
The words that I couldn’t make sense of then suddenly mean something to me now, the same way they had meant something to her. After everything that had happened, I was so… stuck. So deep in winter, it didn’t seem like I’d find a way out. All I saw was the ways I could break.
But when I’m riding around with Blake, or sitting in the bed of her pickup truck, or tackling a new adventure, I feel it. I feel invincible.
Like she did.
That summer, and raising me, and even on that very last day, her hand in mine, the room filled with absolute calm. The cancer couldn’t even touch her anymore.
And it’s that invincible feeling that nudges me to flip from my mom’s tattoo to the Sycamore Street Tattoos Instagram account. Immediately, I see a cartoon pair of tighty-whities, complete with arms and a face, holding up a sign reading: NATIONAL UNDERWEAR DAY TATTOO SPECIAL!
I mean, who would get a tattoo for National Underwear Day? Except, well…
“Blake,” I say, not wanting this adventure to end just yet. “Let’s do this.” I hold up my phone, and she glances quickly at it.
“National Underwear Day? What even is that?”
“What, you’ve never celebrated?”
“Has anyone?”
I glance down at my phone, the tiny cartoon underwear eyes in the Sycamore Street picture staring back at me. “The tattoo parlor in town always has these discount specials around random national holidays.” I double-tap the photo, giving it a like. “You can get a tattoo for, like, fifty bucks. They’ve got a huge clearance binder and everything.”
“Wait. A clearance binder? A clearance binder of tattoos?” Blake asks. “That’s…”
“That’s Huckabee,” I say with a laugh.
“Valid point.” She nods, pausing to scan the farmlands all around us. “What are you going to get?”
“I have a good idea,” I say, reaching out to plug Sycamore Street Tattoos into the GPS.
The inside of the tattoo parlor is surprisingly dark, considering the detail I imagine is required for tattooing.
The walls are lined with brightly colored designs, framed in an attempt at preservation, but the corners are still yellowing with age. Black fold-out chairs sit underneath them, the seats off-kilter. It’s a Russian roulette game to pick the one that won’t collapse underneath you.
I peer past
